The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 fell on Thursday as markets continued to churn following big gains earlier in the week while U.S. coronavirus cases keep rising.
The 30-stock Dow slid 113 points, or 0.4%. The S&P 500 dipped 0.2%.
Airline and cruise-operator stocks fell broadly. United Airlines and Delta were down 1.1% and 0.2%, respectively. Southwest pulled back by 1.4%. Carnival dipped more than 2%.
The Nasdaq Composite, meanwhile, gained 0.5% as tech shares rose slightly. Facebook climbed 0.7%, and Amazon advanced 0.3%. Alphabet climbed 0.2%. Microsoft advanced 0.6%.
Thursday’s moves came as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise. On Wednesday alone, more than 144,000 infections were confirmed in the U.S.
“With several of the early November catalysts out of the way, the market does appear to be expressing concern with some of the near-term COVID trends which have seen the US report record case counts and eight consecutive days of over 100k new cases,” said Yousef Abbasi, global market strategist at StoneX, in a note.
Earlier this week, stocks dependent on an economic recovery rallied, sparked by an announcement from Pfizer and BioNTech that the companies’ Covid-19 vaccine candidate appeared to be more than 90% effective in its phase three trial.
More positive news on the vaccine front could come soon, as Moderna announced on Wednesday evening that its phase-three trial had accrued enough cases of the coronavirus to submit the preliminary results to an independent safety monitoring board.
The positive news for vaccines comes amid a worrying rise in Covid-19 cases across the country. The United States has now confirmed more than 10 million cases of the virus and some areas, including New York City and San Francisco, have announced new economic restrictions in an attempt to slow the spread.
The rally for equities after the Pfizer news followed a strong election week for stocks. Rick Rieder, head of the global allocation team at BlackRock, said Wednesday on “Closing Bell” that he expected stocks to continue to rise through the end of the year, though he expected trading to be choppy.
He also said he expected the economic recovery to continue despite the rise in Covid-19 cases.
“The Fed is going to stay in this accommodative mode for a period of time,” Rieder said. “When you put that much stimulus in, you put that much liquidity in, and then you add fiscal stimulus … the economy will actually do pretty well.”
On the data front, initial weekly jobless claims fell last week to 709,000 from 757,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. That market the fourth straight weekly decline for initial claims.
